In This Episode
Cyber fraud and identity veteran Mary Ann Miller, VP of Client Experience at Prove, joins host Rory Holland to unpack her thirty-year journey at the intersection of technology and security. From launching early neural networks in the nineties to navigating modern deepfake threats, Mary Ann highlights why authentic identity verification has become the essential welcome mat for digital interaction.
The discussion blends high-level risk management strategy with a deeply human perspective, exploring the heartbreaking toll of scams on vulnerable populations like the elderly. Mary Ann also shares captivating stories from her personal adventures, including night diving with majestic manta rays and dining at the royal Clarence House while offering timeless leadership wisdom on leveraging community frameworks and knowing when to pause for the second beat.
Key Takeaways
- Identity as a Foundation: Securing digital identity serves as the fundamental welcome mat for consumer interaction, establishing a safe landscape that protects all users on a platform.
- The Zero-Cost Attack: Modern fraudsters leverage contextual artificial intelligence to scale highly convincing impersonation attacks, dramatically lowering criminal operational barriers.
- The Power of the Pause: Embracing a leadership strategy of waiting for the second beat allows critical operational issues to resolve organically without knee-jerk escalations.
- Human-Centric Security: Beyond the cold framework of analytics, fraud mitigation is ultimately about shielding everyday individuals and preventing catastrophic lifecycle losses.
- The Device Ecosystem: Mobile smartphones have transformed into a highly reliable proxy for identity, unlocking deep transactional validation through device history and possession metrics.
- Cross-Industry Synergies: Confronting systemic cyber crime requires proactive, unified think tanks bringing public and private institutions together to standardize terminology and protection grids.
Transcript
Hook- Best of the Best
Mary Ann Miller: Payments was sold to the Queen. So if you want to think about it that way, there was again a specific date and time when all the banks were going to go live with this technology. So I got iconic status in the bank. Besides getting the payment rails up and running quickly, my fraud project got all the best and the brightest of the IT teams, of budget, of program and project management, of subject matter experts, data scientists and backlink help.
Introduction
Rory Holland: Hi, I’m Rory Holland, CEO of CSTMR, and the host of Mighty Finsights. Every year, I talk with hundreds of financial leaders and innovators. We unpack the highs and lows of working in financial services and fintech. Today, Mary Ann Miller, VP of Client Experience at Prove, joins the show.
Our conversation led to some great moments, including:
How she got a degree in international business without a diploma.
The way that Mary Ann’s mother uses a favorite picture to keep scammers at bay.
The role that restraint plays in being a better leader.
Join me as we get to know the people behind the brands we trust. Let’s dive in…
Risk Management, Even Underwater
Rory Holland: Awesome. Thanks, man. All right. Well, hey, Mary Ann, welcome to the show.
Mary Ann Miller: Okay, sounds. Hi, where are you? It’s bright to be here.
Rory Holland: Yeah, so excited to have you on. There’s so much stuff I want to dive into. You’ve got 30 plus years working in cyber fraud, security. You’ve got some interesting things in your background I would love to dive into. But there’s a couple things I wanted to get into first before we jump into your work at Prove. And you’d shared that you love diving, scuba diving. I’m a fan myself. But you like to dive with sharks. That is a… not something that is on the top of mind for a lot of people, particularly me. I’m curious, like you described it as kind of crazy but fun. Tell me what happened. Like have you done it more than once first of all? If you, like what was that experience like?
Mary Ann Miller: Rory Bissvers, know, scuba diving became, you know, I think of myself as a risk manager. If you’re managing fraud and risk, then managing how you dive and when you dive, especially with sharks, really falls under that risk management umbrella. And I went to the Bahamas and I was, you know, had different excursions and I thought, there’s one where you could dive with sharks. And then, you know, everyone who… you know, if you come across someone, ask you, oh, you’re a diver. They always say, are you afraid of sharks? You when you’re, when you’re doing your dives. And I thought, well, this is an interesting way to really test that question.
So I went on a planned dive with a group. It was fascinating because, you know, the sharks, they just went right past you. It was controlled and of course saved. But it was very exciting. Actually, as you know, when you dive worried, you know this, have to a good trusted buddy. So my dive buddy in the Bahamas was actually a cameraman that was on site filming a movie in the Bahamas. So me and I teamed up and we had a great time.
Rory Holland: Gosh, what was it like? Were they, you weren’t in a cage, were you?
Mary Ann Miller: No, we weren’t the cage. These were more like lemon sharks, very gentle, categorized shark world. So they weren’t someone that they weren’t great whites. They were walking back and walking, you know, floating past us. But one of my really exciting experiences with diving was in Kona, Hawaii. And that was not sharks, but manta rays.
So we had a night dive, which was very fascinating. And we, you know, know it’s at the bottom of this one part of the ocean where this restaurant kept lights on the, on the water at night. Well, that drew Plankton. And so we had lights at the bottom of the ocean and we just sat there waiting. And suddenly these big manta rays, as big as Volkswagen’s, know, came floating gracefully by us. I think that was one of my most touching moments in diving. I just found that to be majestic.
Like Being in Space
Rory Holland: I can imagine for those folks that are listening that don’t know a lot about diving, like, can you describe that experience? Cause you know, as you’re, for those of us that dive, there’s a solitude to it and being under, particularly being underwater and looking up. And if that was, you said it was a night dive, which is a completely different experience and having lights and that sort of thing. Can you kind of describe that feeling that you had when you talk about like majestic and beautiful and these giant creatures like floating in, like you’re in their world?
Mary Ann Miller: That’s right. And so you’re you’re not at the bottom of this. Wreath, you want to call it, you know, if you think about it that way. And everyone’s, you know, kind of in a row and you’re just waiting for these mantas to show up. But in the meantime, it’s very peaceful. You’re going to water. You hear we look you look around. You see color. We had lights so we could see some color. But then suddenly it seems like the mantis just came out of nowhere. It’s almost like the only way I can say in the darkness of the night, it’s almost like you’re in space too. And so it’s a combination of being under the ocean, but having almost like a space experience and these beautiful mantas. And again, they were so peaceful.
Dinner at Clarence House
Rory Holland: I know, beautiful. That’s really cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Tell me a little bit about, I wanted to shift gears, because this is more of a royal experience, and I’m not sure many people know this, but you shared it with us, which is great, and I appreciate it. So you had dinner at the Clarence House in the UK. That sounds very royal. Are you a royal? What’s the story?
Mary Ann Miller: I did. So, yeah, so I am a dual citizen. I lived and worked in the UK, actually in London for 10 years. And it was a magnificent part of my career. And the winning that I ended up at the Clarence House for dinner was for a charity event. I was part of, I was very fortunate when I was head of fraud at Lloyds Banking Group to the president of the retail bank. She took interest in my career and she paired me with a mentor. Her name was Pania Thompson. Pania had a company where she mentored women. She called it in the Marzi clan later. I they were rising up.
And I joined this group of women that was mentored. Pania was a former member of the Foreign Office and she had read a lot of government functions. So she was an outstanding mentor. She wrote a book called Every Woman in a Boardroom. So she took all of us to this charity event at Clarenthap, St. Ann’s House. It was certainly a bucket list moment for me.
Rory Holland: Yeah, what was so special about it?
Mary Ann Miller: Well, you got to be in the halls and the rooms of where the royals spend time. And you really got to be, it looks like you were a guest in their home. And I really loved that experience. I love seeing the history. I love seeing the beauty of it. And I loved being around the table with so many women with so many good experiences and also making those connections and networks.
The First to Do Everything
Rory Holland: Yeah, and just talking about those connections, I wanted to go back a little bit back in time. And you had shared that you’re the oldest of five kids. And I’m kind of curious, like, brothers and sisters, tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up being the oldest, and then what led you into, like, how did you get into fraud? Because I want to talk about your first job.
Mary Ann Miller: I think being the oldest is, if it’s interesting in the reflection, you’re the first to do everything. And so all your brothers and sisters are watching you. So you’re the first to ride a bike and you’re the first to join Girl Scouts and you’re the first to submit your… your product at the fair for 4-H and you’re the first to bring rock and roll into the house. And so you’re the first to do a lot of these things that influence and you’re almost leading and entering by default.
I think the oldest child often becomes, especially in my family, where we were stair steps, literally. We’re very close in age. I think you automatically become a hybrid parent as well. And so it’s foreign leadership, and think it’s not ironic that the oldest child in large families end up usually having good careers and being successful. I think it’s not ironic.
Rory Holland: Yeah, why do you think that is?
Mary Ann Miller: I think it’s natural, naturally, I think you know you’re being watched by your brothers and sisters. I think you know that if you mess up, you’re going to get a lot of attention. You’re also the first to get those lessons from your parents as well. Your brothers and sisters are watching. I think it’s really important that you know right away that the eyes are on you.
I Had a Crush on the Company
Rory Holland: Yeah, it seems like you carried that through your career. Like I was looking at your, checking your LinkedIn. And when we talked off camera, your first job was in Charlotte, North Carolina. And that was in 1990, I think. And you talked about AI off camera in 1990. Did you get it? What was that first job? How did you get it? And was that your first foray into finance and fraud?
Mary Ann Miller: It was. Yeah, it was. I worked in loss prevention previous to that, but I was leaning into wanting to move into banking and into fraud. There was, I got the job by applying. I went, because I had previous experience in some kind of loss prevention. I was hired very quickly.
And during the early days, as you know, Rory, a lot of things were paper. Know, paper faxes, you know, looking through, you know, we look through applications to look for certain kinds of handwriting to see if it was a fraudulent application. We took calls from victims of fraud and technology and I would say the fraud space was emerging. At that time, credit card and debit card fraud were because of the fact that it was before the chip on the card, it was just the magnetic strip. The fraud rates were exploding.
So what happened was I became part of a team and we heard about this technology out of San Diego, California from a company called HNC Software, where they were developing something called neural networks and pattern recognition. Again, early forms of AI to look for credit card fraud. And this became something that I became, I had a crush on the company. I got to be involved with the implementation of this technology. Again, this was outstanding for the mid nineties to have technology out there like that.
And I operationalized it with my team to learn how to respond to the high scores that were indicating the probability of fraud. We’ve all gotten that phone call or is that your transaction? Well, that was this technology was called Falcon in the background, protecting consumers, but also protecting the bank as well.
Rory Holland: Is that when you first discovered this was gonna be your career?
Mary Ann Miller: Yes, that was the moment. I said, I love doing this. Actually H&C liked what they saw, what I did at the bank. And I hired them. And then this is when they were in the middle of their global expansion. And thus that’s where I got my global experience. Suddenly I was in every country in the world, hoping to implement artificial intelligence. This was amazing.
I Got My Master’s in Real Time
Rory Holland: Fun. Yeah, it seems like if you’ve worked at some executive level roles at some major brands, USAA, PayPal, Lloyd’s banking group, what is like, what’s is there a theme there? Like that? What’s the through line for how you kind of move from, you know, Charlotte, North Carolina, and then you went abroad, from what I understand, right? What tell me a little bit about those transitions? And like, what did that teach you? What did you learn along the way? As we kind of guide our way into the conversation and improve in the work that you’re doing now.
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, I think what happened was, you know, I always wanted an international career. In fact, what was interesting, Rory, is I had a mentor when I was in, or a mentor slash friend when I was in Charlotte. It’s actually a neighbor of mine. And I was, you know, working, you know, at HNC. I was working at the bank, moving to HNC. And I said, you know, I think, I think I need, I think need to go back to school and get a master’s degree in International business. I want to work in an international business.
My friend said, you don’t need to do that. It’s the.com. And I said, well, what’s the.com. And then, so he mentioned me into, you know, actually I had three job offers and HNC was one of them. And I leaned into just diving in, leaning in, and I got my master’s. Got my master’s real time, you know, through actual international experience.
Rory’s Commentary
Mary Ann made this decision in the late 90s, at a time when the case for getting a college degree seemed stronger than ever. Now, 25 years later, we’re watching a generation of young adults question that assumption, just like Mary Ann did. She picked the job that scared her the most, and it paid off. I’m walking this path with my son and daughter right now — and my advice to them is to focus less on the degree or the school and more on active learning. Go out into the world, gain some practical experience, pick up some new skills — most degrees can’t give you that.
I Got My Master’s in Real Time (Continued)
Mary Ann Miller: And that led to my actual shift in moving to the UK. And then that led to my networking and my reputation abroad. And that led to 10 hundred reaching out to me when leadership positions became available.
Faster Payments Was Sold to the Queen
Rory Holland: Yeah, how did that translate? Hear little bit more about Nice, Actimized, the work that you did there. It sounds like you built the first ever fraud consulting team there.
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah. So what happens, there was a crossover between Lloyd’s banking group and Nice Actimize when I met Nice Actimize. When I joined Lloyd’s, I built a team, but I also was responsible for the fraud strategy. Was their first head of fraud. The bank, for the retail bank, previous to that fraud was kind of scattered and maybe more lower level positions. And I was empowered again by the president of the retail bank who had a lot of faith in me to lead this fraud strategy.
At the same time, this was a period during the early 2000s, the UK was moving to faster payments. So the whole, I want to say the whole industry, I called her cakes and balloons moment. They turned on higher upper limits, immediate settlement, faster payments between bank to bank. If you want to think about it in the US market, have Zelle, but this is Zelle on steroids. This is really very convenient for the customer. But when I got to the bank and I knew that faster payments was looming and it was about a year away, I asked, you know, what was the strategy that was on the table? And I, and I, you know, I knew that faster payments could be initiated from an online session at that time. It could be initiated from a telephone banking scenario as well. And and I knew that you could do it from the branch. So I knew that I was dealing with protecting cross channel across multiple channels that the customer could interact.
When I saw the bank’s, strategy was at that time, and I’m not going into big detail about that. I knew it was inadequate. So I went straight to the chief first officer, straight to the president of the retail bank and said, you know, given my neural network and my Falcon experience, and let’s start with the fundamentals with cross channel transaction monitoring. And, I was lucky enough to get the retail board to support my business case.
The bank went into an iconic project to build a cross-channel transaction monitoring system, which at that time would score suspicious transactions and then reach out to the customer. Then NiceAptimized was my partner in that development. So that’s how I met the NiceAptimized team.
Rory Holland: Gotcha. Okay, so they came in as a fintech partner to the bank and you worked with them and then you transitioned. Yeah, that’s, you know, I’ve had so many folks on in the banking space and fintech, you know, the nature of our podcast here and there’s so many fintechs out there doing so many things. Like, how do you think about that? Like when you look at partner opportunities, what was it about Nice Actimize that came to you at that time? Like did they stand out to you because you had a relationship or you had heard about them or someone reached out?
Mary Ann Miller: It was a combination of, you know, I didn’t have a relationship, but I needed a partner that was willing to innovate with me. I knew that the fundamentals was a platform. I knew the fundamentals of that we need scoring and analytics. I knew the fundamentals of real time, but I understood that the bottles would be new. I understood that some of the, you know, the ability to interdict payment would be new. I knew that way to integrate this session data from an online session to the device data to get all of it. At that time, that was kind of new digital data into this environment of scoring was all really, really important. So, you know, a lot of companies were out there with like, well, here’s our set kind of set of tools. And they were kind of rigid about it. I really needed the department that was think out of the box with me. And that’s why I chose that.
Rory Holland: How long did that take? Like what was beginning to end to actually implementation?
Mary Ann Miller: That’s a great question, Rory. And you’ve been in these shoes, I can tell. We only have nine months. So what happened was because of the importance to the bank and to, mean, faster payments was sold to the Queen. So if you want to think about it that way, there was, again, a specific date and time when all the banks were going to go live with this technology. So I got iconic status in the bank from an IT perspective.
In other words, besides getting the payment rails up and running quickly, my fraud project got all the best in the brightest of the IT teams, of budget, of program and project management, of subject matter experts, of data scientists, and that’s what helped. Making sure that you have a coordinated programing approach to this and communicated very well with your stakeholders was key to the success.
Rory Holland: Yeah, it was promised to the Queen. You got the liver. Don’t want to be late.
Mary Ann Miller: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.
What Goes Wrong When You Don’t Get Identity Right
Rory Holland: All right, so I want to, you made a move to Vero and done some really exciting things, but I want to kind of get start to get in to prove. And after all that experience, like you just shared some really good examples, going all the way back to the early 90s and then fast forward to today, why, why proof? Like what drew you to prove?
Mary Ann Miller: So I met Roger DeSival, CEO of Prove, and I saw Roger’s vision for identity. I was, if you think about it, I’ll take you back to the bar a little bit. Was at a FinTech that became a national recharging bank during COVID, during one of the, what I call one of the biggest broad events, probably in the world, but certainly in the US, where public sector fraud failures were bleeding over into the private sector.
So I saw a lot of fraud. I saw a lot of identity challenges. I saw a lot of that we needed to connect the dots when it came to identity. And I saw that Roger had this vision and I saw that it was a problem that really needed to be solved and really need innovation around it. So I really think that that was part of why I was, there is one thing to answer the question, is this Mary Ann’s data that’s being presented in the flow? That’s another thing to say was Mary Ann on the other end of that interaction. And I saw that prove had that kind of capability. And I found that very fascinating and unique.
If You Can Save One Victim
Rory Holland: You know, this I want to talk about that. You mentioned you mentioned your own name, but let’s let’s just play that out. So we’ve talked a lot about the technology, but on the other side of all this is a person. So fraud is rampant and the pain that people go through when they’ve been defrauded or their identities have been stolen. And now you’ve got, I want to talk about AI too. What’s the human side of this? Like what, what draws you? What draws you into this to help people this way?
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, there is a human side, billy. So behind every scam behind every fraud behind every money laundering event, there’s victims. There’s victims. There’s a lot of victims and people lose their life savings sometimes. And it’s an it’s unfortunate and it’s tragic. I’m on the board of a company, a nonprofit called the Noble and Ian Mitchell, who’s the founder of the Noble, approached me a few years ago, over five years ago, and we were really looking at, he had this vision of if we brought all the industry together, that we could really be focused together, we could really have impact.
And if you think about it, if you can save one victim, if you can save one scam, if you can save someone from being a victim, there was a lot of power in that. And I knew that my everyday work mattered, but when I got my connection with the noble, I knew that I was making a difference.
Rory Holland: Yeah, that’s wonderful to hear. Saw that you did some work for them. Tell us a little bit more about what Noble does and how it plays into the work that you do every day.
Mary Ann Miller: The Noble does education for the financial crime community. The Noble works with financial institutions, again, to really focus on what are the initiatives that we can put in place to coordinate between attribution, law enforcement, between what financial institutions can do better to really protect the customers and protect the victims of financial crime and what we can do to make an impact. We’re really there to make an impact on the human being and that’s really what Nobles Mission is.
Rory Holland: Yeah, I think it’s easier for us in our industry, and this happens to me too, like we think about the technology, we think about the solutions, we think about the broader problem, but I’m sure probably in your life I know I have a family member that was retired and got defrauded and lost his entire retirement savings. So you hear things like that and I have elderly parents and so always trying to educate them on text messages, phone calls, like be careful. That generation particularly is very vulnerable. We all are. But my heart goes out when people have to experience those types of hardships.
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah. Yeah, it was interesting as I spent some time with my elderly mom recently and she had a picture of me next to the phone. And I said, mom, what’s that picture of me doing next to the phone? She says, it’s a reminder to me that if someone calls and it’s a scammer, that I could be getting scammed. But I think of you. I said, I may be kind of chuckle, but it was her way of having her own fraud reminder, you know, to remind her that, you know, that she could become a victim.
Rory’s Commentary
That association might not be glowing with happy memories, but it’s clearly working wonders for Mary Ann’s mom. Which is pretty amusing since Mary Ann has spent thirty years building sophisticated fraud detection systems — neural networks and cross-channel transaction monitoring. At the end of the day, her mom’s best line of defense is a photograph of her daughter. How beautifully simple. And it captures something no algorithm can replace: the instinct to pause and consider the situation from another perspective. At its core, fraud is a psychology problem, and we need all the help we can get.
If You Can Save One Victim (Continued)
Mary Ann Miller: And, you know, to your point, Laurie, it’s very sad what happens to me, especially the elderly.
Mary Ann Miller: It just happened to my mom just a couple months ago. And as much as I’ve talked to her, she’s like, but I I trusted them until, until she knew. Then thankfully it wasn’t too terrible in it, but you know, having to change all of your, you know, your checking account, your bank changing your banking accounts and all those things that I literally had to fly down to Florida to go through all that for her. It’s, it’s really frustrating when you think about people and organizations for that matter globally, advantage of people using the financial system as just a playground to just defraud people, rip people off, businesses as well.
I noticed, I saw on your LinkedIn that Proof recently joined the Better Identity Coalition. That seems like a wonderful recognition. What is, you may tell us a little bit about that is and what does that mean for you guys?
Mary Ann Miller: Better identity coalition is great. It’s run out of the DC area. It’s really focused on more the broader topic of identity, really across the public and private sector. It’s an important, they do wonderful education. They bring together people that are involved in the field from a legal standpoint and to influence policy, which is really important when it comes to identity. And so I think that it’s really important and critical for proof to get involved in what I call industry relations and the identity, the Better Identity Coalition is an ideal place for us to have that involvement.
AI Has Arrived for the Attack
Rory Holland: Yeah, mean, well, congratulations on that. It looks like an amazing organization. I’m glad that they exist. I wanted to go back to the comment I made about AI. We’re in uncharted waters. People can do deep fakes and all kinds of other things. AI is just, the genie’s out of the bottle. So when you think about the work that Proof does and what the problems you guys are working to solve, where does AI fit into all this and where do you see this going? Like where are we today? Where is this going to go?
Mary Ann Miller: So AI has arrived, AI has arrived for the attack. And of course, AI has been around since the 90s for solving. So we have kind of, when it comes to AI and financial crimes, we have AI that’s built into technology to help, I think of a machine as machine versus machine. But we also have the numbers and numbers of AI threats that are out there from the standpoint of compounding the things that we already know today that we were just speaking of compounding that.
I’ll give you an example, Rory. We know that fosters are using AI and we know that part of the way people are scanned, there’s those phishing or text messages that cause mission. And we’ve all gotten the, is the IRS or this is, you didn’t pay your toll or this is your bank, where it’s not actually the… it’s an impersonation, impersonation of your bank or impersonation of the government. But what the frost years are doing now is using AI to get contextual information, to make those text messages seem more convincing and it’s working.
For example, maybe you got an email from your bank and they’re saying we’re updating our website and we’re really excited about the next phase of that. Well, AI picks up on that. And then you’re getting a text message from a bad actor that says, we’ve just updated our website. We sent you an email three weeks ago telling you about this. We’re now ready to show you our new environment. Click on this link and log in. And so they can show you the new experience and customers do that. And it’s a bad actor taking you to a fake website, collecting your credentials, know, standing you in the middle of that.
So, and that’s just one example. Know that AI is being used to really thwart through the deep fakes. We know that AI is being used to thwart fake driver’s licenses and passports. The quality of those every month has gone up and up and up. So it’s definitely a problem. I know that some banks are being proactive in doing what they call AI broad red team testing where they’re actually getting the good guys to test their controls to see where their gaps are when it comes to AI attacks. So it’s really important to get in front of this.
Trust Is a Currency
Rory Holland: This is a broader question. Just curious your opinion. Going back to COVID, you mentioned all the fraud that happened both publicly and bleeding over into the retail space too. I think we live in a society, I feel like we live in a society there’s a lack of trust with governments, financial institutions, systems, just people don’t trust and then you layer in AI. And there’s a people to people trust, I think. Problem because we live in this digital world and like who do I trust? And I’ve heard this from people before like what do you think the impacts are of the society that we’re in today and then the work that you’re doing like do you see some correlation be trying to protect people in building back trust?
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, trust is a currency, you know, you. Well, if you want to compound that even more worry, think about a genetic. And so we’re looking at, you know, AI driving interactions. So we have a genetic, interactions where we’re going to have a bot shopping on their behalf or paying on our behalf. And then we need to connect the identity of that instructed agent, a generic transaction with the human being. So that was really, really taking it another level of enablement and convenience, but that’s another layer of how do we trust back to that question and what the bad actors can do in those environments and what they can learn. I think that technology, building trust through technology is critical right now.
Rory Holland: Yeah, think we’ve got to protect ourselves from technology, seems like these days. I mean, there’s always been good and evil in the world. It’s just the nature of the world that we live in. And I’m a big believer that light wins over darkness. But the day to day, like I mentioned, my mom, for example, or another relative, and it’s just so pervasive.
I wanted to ask another kind higher level question, just think about proof in the space. There’s lots of competition and it’s just growing. When you think of the think of proves brand and your reputation and trust as a currency, like how did you guys what attracted you to approve related? Is there something related to that with prove and where they are and where they want to go? And then how do think the market receives that from your marketing and that sort of thing?
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, you know, going back to COVID, going back to trust, I call it what goes wrong when you don’t get identity right. And there’s a lot that goes wrong. There’s a lot that goes wrong in both in public sector, private sector, health care, social media. The list goes on and on. And when you don’t get identity right, there’s a lot of things that break down.
And that’s why I’m at proof because I feel like identity, getting identity right really is the initiative. It’s the welcome map. Where you enter into a relationship with a business or a social media company. And if identity is triangulated in the correct way, then it protects everyone on that platform, protects everyone in that environment. It gives the bad actors less bank accounts to cash out and take advantage of all the victims that we’ve been talking about. It really puts a solid foundation around any environment that you’re enabling.
I feel very strongly because I’ve seen the challenges and the failures in identity that prove it’s very committed on the future of identity. Using all the data, all the processes, all the technology that it can, to both enable businesses, but to get identity right.
Wait for the Second Beat
Rory Holland: You mentioned seeing lots of challenges. What would you say is one of the greatest challenges you faced at Proof and how did you find your way through it?
Mary Ann Miller: I think that, well, know, every day the threats change and it’s important for PRUDE to stay on top of those threats. And I think that some of the challenges were for us as a business to really think about how do we stay on top of the challenges like our customer does. And we’ve actually just recently created something, a new fraud engine that we are reusing, new fraud spores that we’re actually enabling our identity platform to really have really good, solid fraud protection built within the identity processes.
So I think that’s always something important as we know that the bad actors, they recycle phones. There’s eSIM farms that are out there now today. There’s sites where you could rent a phone out there today. There’s all these new threats when it comes to actually looking at how the bad actors are getting creative about performing the fraud. So it proved we need to stay right on top of that and we are.
Rory Holland: I wish we could change the hearts and minds of the Froster’s. I really do. I wish we could wave a magic wand and show them the light because it’s, yeah, there’s so many better ways to make a living. Not hurting people. But so you shared a piece of feedback that you received from a colleague and it was, wait for a second, Beat. Can you tell me a bit about that? Who told you that? What was happening when you heard it? How did you respond?
Mary Ann Miller: So, was really good advice. That was from Fania Thompson back in the UK. And during one of our mentoring sessions, I was sharing some challenges I was having, putting in this big platform and I needed that, I had timelines and I was dealing with lots of different personalities during the program, whether it was IT or whether it was executive, I really needed to communicate across all different people in the organization. And then you’re also dealing with the day-to-day fraud and the ability to triage fraud that was just happening in the bank.
In the fraud world, you can have a tendency because it happens so much to jump, know, jump at every email, know, really, you know, move with urgency. You felt like you were in a constant alarm, in a constant viral alarm all the time. And Pania suggested to me, she said, Mary Ann, something’s resolved themselves. And if you wait for the second beat, your team might even resolve the problem. You don’t have to get involved with every action. You can lean into your team.
Rory’s Commentary
I’m going to lean on a parenting metaphor again. As a parent, you want to support your children and guide them to a successful outcome. But it’s really easy to overfunction and rob your children of the chance to learn critical life-lessons. As leaders, this dilemma can be just as painful. Allowing your team to tackle a problem requires restraint. You have to be ok with solutions and processes you wouldn’t have picked. I would argue that this is also where the real magic happens. If you hire talented people, then you want the full power of their creativity and skill — not clones or drones. Mary Ann learned to trust in her team more not less. The results are pretty hard to argue with.
Wait for the Second Beat (Continued)
Mary Ann Miller: So I experimented with it and I found that it works. So there’s some circumstances, just taking a deep breath, waiting for more information, waiting for more data, conducting more due diligence is sometimes a better answer than just jumping in and trying to solve a problem right away.
Rory Holland: Oh man, we could talk about that for hours in my career too. Like I’m a jump to fix things, business and personal life. If comes up in the family, I’ve got the solution. Might not be the right one, but taking a second beat, that’s a great one. That’s a good reminder. And I think you’re so right. I often jump to how I’m going to fix it. And I don’t know you’ve read the book, Who Not How? Great book, a friend of mine gave me that book some years ago and he’s like, hold on a second. It’s like, you don’t have to know how to do everything. You don’t have to solve, go to the how you solve every problem. Go to your friends, go to your network, like who can help you? Go to your team, lay the problem out. Like why do you got to jump on it? One, it stresses us out. And two, I think, you know, our teams will likely help us in our communities. Like just help us solve problems in better ways than we could. There’s a piece in that and being like, okay, I’m surrounded by good people. This is a problem. I don’t have to solve it, but if we don’t take the beat, it reminds me of like when, I don’t know if your mom used to tell you this, but like count to 10 if you’re mad before you say anything back. It usually goes away.
Mary Ann Miller: That’s right. Yeah.
If You Forgot Your Phone, Would You Go Back?
Rory Holland: Count to 10, go for a walk. Thanks for sharing that. That’s awesome. What good advice. So a couple more things before we start wrapping up. I wanted to ask about the work that you did at the US Federal Reserve. You worked for a task force, is that right? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, it was on a couple of force. Was first it was on the insecure payments, passports, and then it was also on the scam definition and classification task force. I think the Federal Reserve does a really good job of bringing a cross section of industry experts together in a big room, usually, know, cast of a lot, but the banks, financial, you know, bringing the banks together with technology experts, SMEs in one room.
And when they’re really trying to look at, know, through the industry, how to form policy, how to influence the guidance and regulation, they’re taking a cold consultative approach. And with, say for instance, the spam definition and classification work group, we actually did perform to work product and we came up with a scan classifier. And this was just to give banks of all sizes a way to think about when a customer or consumer reported a scam on how to think about how to classify all the numbers of scams that are out there. So it’s really bringing the industry together like a think tank and to form work products.
Rory Holland: Do you, is that something you still do from time to time?
Mary Ann Miller: I haven’t recently, I’m more than willing to jump on board.
Rory Holland: Might get a call after this launches. I had a question. I had read that Proof’s thesis is that mobile phones can be a proxy for identity and that maybe that’s replacing passwords or security questions. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? I visualize it, but I’m kind of curious about that. Did I get that right, generally speaking? What does that mean?
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, might do that. Yeah, generally you did. If you think about it, if you leave the house and you forgot your phone, have you ever gone back to get it? Or, yeah. So we really keep our phones with us. And they’re with us all the time. They, you know, we communicate with our family and loved ones. We access our bank accounts. We access social media. Everything’s done on our phone. So we keep that phone with us.
If you think about it, it becomes part of our identity in a way. It’s really by our side. So that bone can be very helpful when it comes to triangulating identity. At Krug, when we look at identity, we look at the possession of the phone, the reputation of the phone, what kind of line type, the tenure associated, how long has Bori had that phone, and then the identity associated with that phone. If you kind of piece those ingredients together, it tells a story. And that really helps protect us when we’re interacting on our phone to make sure that it is actually us at the other end of those interactions.
We’re Going to Need an Elon Mindset
Rory Holland: Wish we had more time, because I’d like to get into how that would work. But there’s a couple of things I want to ask you. We’d like to ask a fun question, executive headhunting question. If you could fantasy headhunt, who might you hire to join you at Prove? And you said Elon Musk, because you love how he innovates, bringing ideas to life. Can you share a little bit more about where that came from?
Mary Ann Miller: Okay. Yeah, think about Elon. Elon really puts all the ingredients to the reason. He’s thinking that innovating to launch electric vehicles that are autonomous. He’s innovating to launch rockets and it’s working. He’s innovating to build and bore tunnels and all that requires a lot of thinking. And I think we’re at a juncture of innovation. We were talking about eugenics interactions later, late, know, earlier, and how we’re going to have autonomous bots doing things for us. And I think that’s going to require the kind of thinking that you want with everyone in the room. You know, you’re going to get pizza boxes delivered. You’ve got to keep thinking through how to solve this problem.
I don’t think that’s an easy problem to solve. I don’t think it’s easy to think about how are we going to protect those genetic transactions? How are we going to is seamlessly paid and have those transactions be safe? And I think when it comes to automation and robots actually acting on our behalf, I think it’s going to require like a new on mindset to really, I think we’re going to have a lot of stops and starts if we don’t really put that keen innovation around that.
Rory Holland: Yeah, I wonder if Elon is following your friend’s advice for you. Wait, take a beat. I bet he is.
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, yes, I’m very honest.
I Just Want to Stay Here and Watch It
Rory Holland: He’s pretty good about that. Although he’s, yeah, he’s quite an innovator. Yeah, that would be really cool to work with that guy. So, wanted to ask you a couple of questions and we’ll close out. This one is about like where you are in life. So, you’ve been at this for 30 plus years. You and I got started around the same time. And looking at the season in life you’re in now, like for people in your life and your career, for people to really know you, what might you tell them?
Mary Ann Miller: Oh, that’s really a good question, right? Like this season in my life, think it’s important to me to make sure that, you know, continue your curiosity. The curiosity is so important. I think it’s also important for, think we want to think of the word mentor or connect with the next generation that’s coming up. I think it’s so important.
I had the, I guess the joy, the excitement of watching payments become electronic and watch the birth of the internet and watch the birth of mobile. Now the birth, know, and, and, and, and to get deep into AI. And now we’re on the edge of, you know, of AI, even, you know, in its advanced and more mature stages. I’ve to watch all of this through my career, which looking back on it was fascinating and exciting and wonderful. And I want the next generation to be able to have that kind of excitement wrapped around what they’re going to see. The challenges are going to be even, I think even more than what we have, through all those transitions and changes. But I think it’s really important for me to be there for that next generation.
Rory Holland: I love that. Mean, the legacy that you’re leaving in all of the good work that you’ve done and just what you’ve shared today in our short period of time together is wonderful. And you have so much to offer. I like to think that we can be very productive and use that wisdom and experience that we’ve built and that you’ve built over the last several decades for the next generation. So continuing to stay purposeful, help people solve real world problems, make a difference in the world and pass that on to the younger generation because they’re going to need some help. They’re living in a completely different time than we did.
But when you reflect the way that you did, you’re right. If you look through the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s, and then social media, all the different stages, we didn’t think it could evolve much faster or much different than it was. Then bam, then AI comes along in a whole different way. Who knows what a decade now is for gonna look like, but what an exciting time.
Mary Ann Miller: Okay. It is it is and I’m full have to just stay here and watch it. Watch it continue to happen, right?
Rory Holland: Sure. This has been wonderful. If people want to connect with you, know, other FinTech or financial professional or fraud professionals for that matter, how would they best find you and get in touch with you?
Mary Ann Miller: Yeah, you can email me at mmillerapproved.com or I’m on LinkedIn, reach out. And I’m always happy to network and connect. I really, that’s part of my favorite part of the day.
Rory Holland: Man, it has been an absolute pleasure, Mary. Thanks so much for the time today. Love to have you on.
Mary Ann Miller: Thank you, Mary. Likewise.
Outro
Rory Holland: We’re living in a moment when it’s harder than ever to know what is true and what is synthetic. Even live video chat can’t prove your identity. It’s easy to forget that we’re facing an old problem. It just looks new and unsolvable.
Once upon a time, the king’s seal, a graven emblem stamped into wax, was required to establish the authority of a written decree or letter. In more recent history, a signature on a paper check was the de facto way to prove a transaction was legitimate. Now, money can move instantly, electronically and our systems for proving a person’s identity are facing an AI-sized threat. If we can’t believe our eyes and ears, how do we decide who to trust?
Trust has been at the core of Mary Ann Miller’s work for the last thirty years. The technology might be changing faster than ever, but the foundations of leadership, integrity, and legitimate commerce haven’t changed. It makes me sad to think that the net effect of AI technology seems to be less trust for our fellow humans. That’s a tough place to be, where a deepfake could cause you to question the identity of your closest colleagues, friends, and family.
Thankfully we have people like Mary Ann Miller on the job, developing new and novel ways to defend against fraud. I think maybe we could all use a picture of Mary Ann on or near our phones. A little reminder that trust is a gift that we should give generously to some people, and cautiously to everyone else.
